Booklet notes writer Edward Morton Jack gets the Yellow
River piano concerto spot on when he describes it as “more
a series of tunes arranged for piano and orchestra than a formal
concerto”. It is, in fact, the sort of thing that would appeal
to those possessed of a musical sweet tooth. Try it if you appreciate
such concertante lollipops as Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw
Concerto, Charles Williams’ The dream of Olwen
or Nino Rota’s The legend of the glass mountain.

Originally composed as a cantata at the beginning of the Second
World War, the Yellow River concerto has, since its final politically-driven
revision (by committee!) in the Cultural Revolution of the early
1970s, been recorded surprisingly frequently. My own shelves
hold a 1990 recording from Yin Cheng-Zong (Marco Polo 8.223412)
as well as others from Eileen Huang (1994 – on ASV CD DCA 1031)
and Shen Shucheng (recording details unspecified on Olympia
OCD 701, but possibly recorded c.1994).

I also own the Deutsche Grammophon DVD Dragon songs
( 00440 073 4191 ) in which Lang Lang, flamboyantly dressed
in a white tuxedo, plays the piece while accompanied by “100
female piano players” and no less than four full symphony
orchestras, all occupying an enormous stage. It’s the sort of
big-scale extravaganza that the fascinating mid-nineteenth century
maverick Louis Moreau Gottschalk used to go in for. It looks
pretty grotesque 150 years later and I’m afraid that an image
of Liberace kept popping into my mind all through the film.

As well as those, I imagine that there must be many other recordings
around – a number probably circulating only in China where the
piece remains hugely popular - this new disc’s back cover refers
to it as “music of iconic status”. Now Yundi joins the fray.

Iconic within China though it may be, in fact the Yellow River
concerto’s limited scale and ambitions and its often derivative
nature means that it offers few opportunities for pianists to
make much of an individual mark on it. Of the recordings I’ve
mentioned, Yin Cheng-Zhong offers perhaps the most distinctive
version as he adopts relatively speedy tempi throughout
– but, in other respects, there is little to differentiate the
others’ approaches.

Yin Cheng-Zong, 1990

Eileen Huang, 1994

Shen Shucheng, c.1994?

Lang Lang, 2005

Yundi, 2011

I: Song of the Yellow River boatman

3:28

3:46

3:37

4:12

3:39

II: Ode to the Yellow River

4:16

4:25

4:27

4:12

4:23

III: Wrath of the Yellow River

6:45

7:03

7:32

6:54

7:02

IV: Defend the Yellow River

6:28

6:59

6:30

6:51

6:14

Perhaps the most striking element of the new Yundi disc is
its sound quality, for its engineers have provided a reverberant
acoustic that exaggerates even more than usual the concerto’s
aspirations to grandeur and its political rhetoric. The latter
quality is especially apparent in the final movement which makes
great play of familiar musical phrases from The internationale
and The east is red (see here
on Youtube for a typically bombastic Maoist-era account
that within just a few minutes veers off into distinctly Busby
Berkeley territory in a way that the aforesaid Liberace would
no doubt have loved).

If the Yellow River concerto appeals to you, this is a version
that is at least as good as the others and, by playing up the
music for all it’s worth, Yundi – whether he intends to or not
- puts it in its proper context as primarily a piece of mid-century
Communist agitprop rather than a real contribution to musical
history.

In complete contrast, the disc is filled out – if, that is,
a total time of just over 62 minutes justifies the word “filled”
– by short pieces that that, according to the EMI blurb, “show
Yundi at his most personal and beguiling”. They are arrangements
of Chinese folk songs, other songs that are well-known in the
country and some specially composed material. Fairly typical
is the original source of track 17, Celebrating our new
life – which turns out to be an arrangement of music from
a 1952 Chinese government documentary film The Great Land
Reform. I must try to catch it next time it shows up at
the local multiplex … These fillers are all pleasant enough
but a single hearing was, in truth, quite enough for me.

Incidentally, the title The red piano doesn’t only
refer to the concerto’s political origins. Even though you can
find no reference to the fact in the booklet – which concentrates
exclusively on the music – Yundi does from time to time play
on a piano that’s been coloured a rather nauseous shade of red
(see
here on Youtube). That’s another gimmick that’s more than a little
reminiscent of Liberace. Can we expect the candelabra next?

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